


when we were young.

by mihkrokosmos



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst with a Happy Ending, Author Is Sleep Deprived, BIG MOOD, Bittersweet, I Don't Even Know, M/M, OH they're doing gcses bc gcse students rly b going thru it, Self-Destruction, The power of friendship, Unedited and unbetaed, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator, and a levels, and do kyungsoo, anyway, bc i do not have a beta, don't psychoanalyse this, except kyungsoo acts like a middle aged man, i also do not possess the ability to edit, i have diamond stuck in my head just so u know, i wrote this because i wanted to vent, is the ending too happy, it's sad, jongin has more depth than anyone expected, lapslock, love him. miss him, mainly between sekai, shhh - Freeform, side seho if we're being pedantic, small but powerful, the other members are mainly just mentioned, we love a vent fic, well kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 05:12:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19761286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihkrokosmos/pseuds/mihkrokosmos
Summary: hate was a strong word. not as strong as, hmm, loathing. ah, but it was still quite strong, and so kyungsoo had decided from an early age that he would only use it sparingly. what did do kyungsoo hate? he hated disorganisation. he hated falling ill. he hated how forgetful he could be under stress. oh.kim jongin.he hated kim jongin.(it plays out like a bad webdrama. or a desperate attempt at a ya novel written by a struggling, middle-aged white woman. at its core, the whole situation is undeniably melodramatic and pretentious in that teenage way. makes sense, considering they're all melodramatic, pretentious, angsty teens).





	when we were young.

**Author's Note:**

> ah, kyungsoo. i miss that little bastard. anyway, i'm frustrated and sad and feeling all those weird teenager emotions so have this little nonsensical piece it's all fun and games, my loves, until it isn't. n e way don't be a sehun. whatever happens in ur life, Do Not Be A Sehun. also this has a lot of kinda sad n heavy topics treated casually which is peak gen z im dfhkfwjajfjhsk,, just...... don't take shit for granted
> 
> my twt is LGBTMINH0 . pls say hi.

funny how the simplest things can annoy a person the most.

kyungsoo liked to think he was levelheaded . mature, even. certainly, he was not the type to grit his teeth and flail his fists at a mere inconvenience. as it was, today had been _hell_. it wasn't as if kyungsoo wasn't used to off days; he was familiar with the feeling of everything going to shit. it was his first a level year, after all. it should be illegal to put seventeen-year-olds under so much pressure.

anyway. kyungsoo was pragmatic. sensible. the type of person teachers trusted to carry files from one place to another. this was a fact, indisputable and inarguable. something like walking in on two very familiar figures should not get to him. he knew this, so why was he so _furious_?

_youknowhowthisendsyouknowhowthisendsyouknowhowthisendsyoukn-_

_hate_ was a strong word. not as strong as, hmm, loathing. ah, it was still quite strong, and so kyungsoo had decided from an early age that he would only use it sparingly. what did do kyungsoo hate? he hated disorganisation. he hated falling ill. he hated how forgetful he could be under stress. oh.

kim jongin. 

he hated kim jongin. kyungsoo hated the way the golden boy broke his own heart, again and again. hated how amber eyes welled up with tears in the safety of bathroom stalls and behind closed doors. by extension, he should also hate oh sehun, shouldn't he? what a world they lived in.

bit by bit, the anger slunk out of kyungsoo's system, leaving his bones bleached and bare. he supposed he also hated the feeling of hatred, the exhaustion that came with it. it was so... pointless. there was only so much a person could do about their emotions, really, bottling them up saved everyone time and energy. was that just his way of looking at it? huh, maybe. it made him laugh, kinda, when he thought about how so many of his hates revolved around jongin.

it always came back to jongin. jongin and his blinding grin and tanned complexion and his sad, sad, sad eyes. always so sad.

overhead, the sky darkened.

see, it was like this:

everyone talked about jongin. kyungsoo had heard more about jongin from his form class than from the boy himself. none of it true, obviously. still morbidly entertaining. the thing was, jongin was lovable. sunbeams were woven into messy, slightly-too-long hair, supernovas danced in his gaze. everything about jongin was... _enchanting_. from the way he talked to the way he moved. he was intrinsically interesting, his lightly accented english catching more than just students off-guard.

it was almost cruel, kyungsoo mused. everyone adored jongin, except his boyfriend.

oh sehun was a masterpiece in himself. objectively. kyungsoo was gay, yeah, but that wouldn't impact his judgement on sehun's looks. or... maybe it would, since he wasn't sure if he should still find sehun attractive after all he did. maybe it was because they were all fucking idiots. maybe it was because kyungsoo could never fully blame him. god, life had no right being so confusing.

where jongin was every constellation, sehun was a black hole. the boy seemed to have shadows snagging at the heels of his shoes as he strutted past. the epitome of arrogant confidence. kyungsoo should find him insufferable, but he didn't. hey, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to boil down to _before_. kyungsoo had known sehun _before_ , and it made all the difference.

not to be disgustingly poetic, but it broke his heart a little. _it_ had started off as jongin-and-kyungsoo. the pair were inseparable since jongin had landed in their tiny, suffocating, very _british_ neighbourhood. he'd been all soft edges and wide eyes and kyungsoo may have been a little in love. what began as jongin-and-kyungsoo quickly grew, however, and an introvert like kyungsoo really didn't stand a chance against the lively group of jongin-sehun-baekhyun-chanyeol-minseok-jongdae-junmyeon.

also, that was a fucking _mouthful_ to say, so kyungsoo's absence probably made things easier..?

it wasn't as if he minded being sidelined 24/7. no, really. he had been used to it since before jongin crash-landed into his life. it wasn't all that difficult to return to being the shy kid with glasses and awkwardly cropped hair. what _was_ difficult, on the other hand, was watching the little group fall apart and fall back together. the vase had shattered and the edges were too jagged to fit once more. kyungsoo had done what he always did.

watched.

jongin threw his entire being into dance. baekhyun dated around, dated some more, ended up with a boy called yixing who wasn't looking for someone like baekhyun. he ditched and took baekhyun's vibrance with him. chanyeol hung around the wrong crowds too often, disappeared suddenly and reappeared in baekhyun's bed, which nobody wanted to discuss. self-destruction was not an uncommon occurrence. minseok and jongdae had tried. they really had. what did you do, though, when you lose interest? staying together for the sake of staying together had worn the pair down. kyungsoo never found out what happened after minseok went back to korea with his family.

sehun and junmyeon.

what were they, if not catalysts? 

kyungsoo had envied what they had. more than he ought to. they complemented each other in every way, junmyeon's placidity balancing out sehun's energy. they weren't obnoxiously affectionate, no. it was the subtle touches, the heavy gazes which reinforced the bubble of sheer _care_ that the pair were encased in. and then junmyeon was gone.

no goodbye, no warning. just an empty house and exhausting rumours.

the sehun kyungsoo was acquaintances with left on junmyeon's airplane. the sehun who stayed was harsh, full of acerbic words laced with caustic glares. the group choked on the poison he doused them in, each piece eroding and falling away. one by one.

kyungsoo had never truly felt like he was ever there. that left jongin as the last man standing.

it was inevitable. sehun was shattered. jongin was whole. it was like a puzzle piece, except with no reference image. it looked _wrong_.

according to sehun, it felt wrong too. he never explicitly said it, but it was evident when he went home with anyone who wasn't jongin, when he left jongin in the middle of a date because he was bored, when he didn't bother hiding the texts which weren't sent to jongin's contact. kyungsoo hadn't ever had a proper relationship, but common sense told him that this was not how things should go.

kyungsoo ended up being the safety net. he would catch jongin, when he fell, and stay until he could stand on his own two feet. that was fine. he was fine with that. okay, truthfully, he didn't understand why jongin still came to him for help.

(he'd voiced that, once, and jongin had stared at him with that melancholic intensity. kyungsoo almost regretted it, but jongin just grinned - his smiles were tinged with sadness, kyungsoo noticed - and shrugged.

"i'll tell you. someday."

"someday?"

"someday.")

it was kyungsoo who clutched a sobbing jongin, a jongin who would _never be enough,_ _hyung, never_ , an irrevocably broken jongin. yet it was kyungsoo who could never hold it against sehun, which his empty gaze and his icy indifference. christ, they were all a little too fucked up and a little too stressed and this was all a little too much. sehun had been abandoned and now he was the one doing the abandoning. kyungsoo could understand it. somewhat. didn't mean his heart didn't ache for jongin, who would always go back. time and time and time again. another thing kyungsoo didn't understand.

"junmyeon is back," jongin hummed, staring unabashedly at kyungsoo over the tower of books between them.

kyungsoo swallowed. pushed his glasses further up his nose. tried to comprehend the implications of this new fact. he never stopped tapping at his laptop keys, though the words on his document devolved into plain bullshit as his mind wandered off to explore the maze of jongin's three words.

"oh."

"i broke it off with sehun."

kyungsoo paused at that, eyebrows raised high over the thick rim of his frames. his blatant shock makes jongin giggle. it's a soft, honest sound, lacking that veil of misery which was shrouded over the younger boy for the past year or so. it did something to kyungsoo's heart. hm. maybe he had too much caffeine.

"you... broke up with him, not the other way around?" 

"hyung," jongin sighed, earnest and sincere as ever, "i hear what people say. i'm not an idiot, for the most part. i know they think i'm too stupid or, i don't know, _naive_..? maybe. anyway, i know they think i don't see what sehun has been doing. i know _you_ think i'm just blinded by love, or something along those lines."

the clock read six pm. they had school tomorrow. jongin abandoned his history essay on the cold war in favour of twirling a pen around slender fingers. kyungsoo does not know what all of this means. he was, nevertheless, no stranger to waiting, and so he waited for jongin to speak again. which he did.

"i think... i think i knew more than anyone, how lost sehun was. i definitely knew he only latched onto me because i stayed. i still accepted his, uh... confession. if you can call it that. it was so _dumb_ , but i thought i'd be helping him. in a roundabout way. i thought i could show him that not everyone leaves -"

"- but it drained you," kyungsoo interjected, eyes aimed firmly towards his screen, head lost somewhere in the rainclouds outside, "jongin, you're an angel. you are also an idiot, and _not_ a qualified therapist."

"...thanks. i know. can i continue?"

"yeah. sorry."

"anyway, i couldn't. clearly. i realised i wasn't helping, i did! i just... i couldn't _leave_ him, either. i wanted to at least be there, you know? but, now 'myeon is back. they have a lot to work through, i guess, but he's _back_."

kyungsoo tilted his head, glanced up at jongin. jongin, who must have returned to his history essay at some point. his hair is a birds' nest and his lips pulled into a pout over awkward phrasing. kyungsoo could never really relate to sehun and jongin's push-and-pull disaster. on the other hand, jongin's willingness to help rings in his ears.

_i wanted to at least be there, you know?_

yeah. yeah, he knew.

the homework was finished hours ago. well, kyungsoo's was. jongin may have left his essay hanging on the word ' _perestroika_ ', but that was neither here nor there. if anyone cared, said word had also been misspelled four times, so it was in the better interests of everyone to not ask him about the cold war for now. the pair were curled up in kyungsoo's room, the shorter boy sitting cross-legged as he peered over jongin's shoulder to argue over the validity of _memories of the alhambra_ as a netflix series.

"it's not even that good!" he huffed, trying to reach the phone, "park shinhye barely has a role in it."

"first of all, _soo_ , you think _a korean odyssey_ is peak cinema. i don't think you get a say in this."

the conversation from earlier still lingered in kyungsoo's brain, drifting to the forefront, only for kyungsoo to push it aside. jongin would talk when he wanted to talk. he had always wondered how the second lead in romance movies felt when the protagonist ran off with their first love. kyungsoo had always seen himself as said second lead. nobody anticipated the role to be given to _jongin_.

it took jongin's laughter for kyungsoo to realise he'd spoken aloud. hm, embarrassing. although, he did find it difficult to be totally mortified when jongin grinned like kyungsoo had hung the stars in the sky.

"it's not perfect," jongin mused, turning so that they were face to face. he pulled kyungsoo forward, chest against chest as jongin rested his head on top of kyungsoo's, "they have a _lot_ of talking to do. 'myeon owes a lot of people explanations and sehun... sehun needs to heal. properly."

"preferably without putting your mental health on the line," kyungsoo grumbled, words muffled by jongin's turtleneck.

"mmm, yeah, that would be ideal. it's a start, though, isn't it? i mean, baek has some baggage to sift through. yeollie might need a kick or two to get back on track. but, it's a start. right, hyung?"

kyungsoo pulled back from their hug to scrutinise jongin's earnest hope. there had never been a time where jongin _didn't_ wear his heart on his sleeve and now was no exception. who was kim jongin? a sixteen year old boy who had galaxies in his gaze and equally as endless love to give and give and give. an impulsive overthinker. a dancing anomaly, with his naive wisdom. kyungsoo had always been a little bit in love, he reckoned.

"it's a start," kyungsoo whispered.

he didn't dare to hope that this would blow over in a week or so. there were too many unsaid words for that. give it a couple months, a couple years, though. a start was a start. he might give anything for things to mend themselves, for the people he knew to be whole once more.

jongin seemed to be off in his own little world, eyes skirting across the _nct_ posters plastered across kyungsoo's wall, blending in with the random _harry potter_ merch and the _raven cycle_ stickers he'd bought from redbubble. small things to remind everyone that kyungsoo was human too. he seemed to find what he was looking for, because his jaw set and his stance resolute when he made eye contact again.

"hyung-" and for all jongin's confidence, his voice shook. kyungsoo reached out; he cradled jongin's face in his hands, a reminder that he could take his time, no matter what. it was both grounding and jarring.

"hyung," jongin tried again, "i want to kiss you, kinda. a lot. but, i should ask first, right? and, if this... goes anywhere, you're gonna have to wait for me, because i don't know how _healthy_ emotions work. mmm... you asked why i still came to you for help, a while ago. maybe you don't remember. it was a valid question, but also kinda stupid. we got distanced, but you're still _kyungsoo_. we got fake married when we were seven - don't poke me, i can see you moving - and my family joked we'd actually get married someday -"

"nini, this is a terrible time to propose."

"wait, wh- _no_. god, no, i'm not- i'm trying to say _i liked you_ , but in present tense because i still, surprisingly, like you."

"that was in present tense. just now. those are the words you're looking for."

"i take it back. i hate you."

it takes them a while. jongin passes his gcses (he get's an a* in history, after all) and is mercilessly catapulted into a levels. kyungsoo would feel a lot sorrier for him if he didn't insist on spamming kyungsoo's messages with questionable memes at four am on the dot. every fucking morning.

whilst it only takes them a couple months, the others are still working through their respective issues. nobody has a problem with it. only an idiot would try to rush the healing period. some days are better than others, it's true, and other days kyungsoo thinks _he's_ taken five steps back. it's an odd process, rebuilding your walls to accommodate someone else. then again, jongin jokes that he never actually went anywhere, kyungsoo just couldn't see him.

jongin.

they didn't kiss that day. turns out, bottling up your emotions means you're even more exhausted after spilling them across the floor. they fell asleep, tangled in gentle whispers and silken relief. they never decided on a drama to watch, but the 'confessions-whilst-the-other-sleeps-but-they're-actually-awake' trope plays out anyway. it's a bad time to use the 'cursed l-word', but they do it anyway.

when they do kiss, it's in the park near jongin's house and after jongin got stuck in the kid's swing because he may be seventeen, now, but he's still an idiot sometimes. kyungsoo would be lying if he said he didn't count each of jongin's genuine smiles as a win.

it plays out like a bad webdrama, or a desperate attempt at a ya novel written by a struggling, middle-aged white woman. at its core, the whole situation is undeniably melodramatic and pretentious in that teenage way. makes sense, considering they're all melodramatic, pretentious, angsty teens.

they're getting better, though. kyungsoo can't hate that.


End file.
